be hasty. I work until ten or eleven tonight PST, so I'll be back to check then. I'll accept more than one application if some one else finds interest, and I MIGHT even let two or three more into the game. MAYBE MAYBE MAYBE.

I am working my way through the thread so that I am completely caught up, but I want to go ahead and throw this out in case it can be more quickly answered possibly.

As the 10th member, is there an organization that I will already belong to so that we can keep the numbers even? Likewise, in the main character thread there is an interest for both mechanics and drivers. Is there already an abundance of one? If so, I would like to play the other.

I am working my way through the thread so that I am completely caught up, but I want to go ahead and throw this out in case it can be more quickly answered possibly.

As the 10th member, is there an organization that I will already belong to so that we can keep the numbers even? Likewise, in the main character thread there is an interest for both mechanics and drivers. Is there already an abundance of one? If so, I would like to play the other.

I'd say just create a character you'd like to play and then Photo will discuss it with you once he's back online. Because people aren't set in groups or anything yet, it's hard to say really. I mean, there are two 'mechanic's', quite a few drives and some other characters as well. Just take a look through and see what you'd like (: Sorry I couldn't be of more help.

I am working my way through the thread so that I am completely caught up, but I want to go ahead and throw this out in case it can be more quickly answered possibly.

As the 10th member, is there an organization that I will already belong to so that we can keep the numbers even? Likewise, in the main character thread there is an interest for both mechanics and drivers. Is there already an abundance of one? If so, I would like to play the other.

I don't think that we're really short on mechanics or drivers, so you could do either or neither. Photo has kind of emphasized the fact that we should play whatever we want and that he'll craft the story accordingly for everyone to fit in even if they're involved in a capacity other than racing or fixing cars. There's a spoiler in the second post with ideas for non-driver characters and whatnot, but you've probably seen it.

Character build: John is 6'3, 195 pounds and somewhere between athletic and thin.

Affiliation: Med-school student, already starting his residency for the past year or so. John is shaping up to be a pretty amazing doctor, as his family always wanted, however recently he's finally saved up enough cash to hopefully get himself involved in the local street racing scene! Though, he's never before been a part of anything like that, and only remembers street racing from what he fucked around with as a teenager. He love's it though.

Automotive Preference (The bike): John has saved up a fair deal of money, but needs a lot more fast if he is going to be able to actually buy something top of the line to break into the scene and become an actual driver. He's planning to try and bet what he has at the next race to double up and get a car. Currently though, he drives a bike. http://www.totalmotorcycle.com/photos/2006models/2006-Victory-VegasJackpotb.jpg

Brief History: Truth be told John's life has not really been that difficult so far. The worst he could probably say about his upbringing is that his parents were extremely strict, and (in his opinion) expected far too much out of him. Most of that had to do with the fact that his parents are multi-millionaires, and the idea is that he is going to pick up the torch once his father finally passess away. John however never had an interest in business, and always found himself more interested in cars and bikes, living life by gauge of your fuel tank over some corporate office. Maybe because it was so different compared to what he was used too.

Regardless his father would have none of it, he was barely even allowed to participate in sports from his mother's fear that he might snap his neck! Well near the end of High School, which was of course spent at only the best male boarding school in the country, John realized that the only way he was going to get out of taking over and joining in on the family business to even have some kind of a chance of getting away was if he did something that was still seen as respectable. Well, he had always thought medicine was sort of interesting. I mean, he loved ER and watched Scrubs constantly in college. So, he went into Med-School once his father consented, and has actually developed quite an aptitude for medical science. Spurred on all the more by the fact that his father seems to have left him alone in California while knowing that he is doing well in his practice.

Appearance: He doesn't hold to any particular style, and more often then not is probably in his hospital scrubs having just come or about to head off to work. Otherwise he wears whatever is the latest thing from Walmart or Target.

Personality: John is a kind, smiling sort of man who loves to joke around and meet new people. He typically remains pretty reserved about his past however, not because of any dark secrets, but just does not like to admit that he actually is an extremely wealthy person because of who his parents are. In fact, John goes out of his way to buy cheap clothes to further assist the illusion. In his experience, people treat the 'rich kid' a lot differently.

He has been called ambitious when he finds something that he loves. Trouble is he's only found two things he loves, racing/cars and medicine.

Other: Straight, with a certain attraction to the more devious and daring sort of women. As this embodies everything that he could not have while growing up in schools, surrounded by a bunch of stuck up bitches, or worse, just men.

I've been playing way too many nice girls lately.And it really doesn't look to me like you've got anybody here who qualifies as a bad boy...Heart of gold or not.

This cannot stand.

CarnivalOfTheGoat

Quote

"My Daddy, think what you will about him, felt inspired to name me Rex. Now there's two ways I figure to look at that. If you believe names mean anything. Either I'm gonna be the cause of some serious crash and burn...Or baby, I'm the King. And I tell you, I've never been in one I couldn't walk away from, and I don't plan to start."

Character Name: Rex Hartmann

Age: 12 September, 27 y/o

Character build: A lean and hungry five-foot-ten, one-forty. Pale-skinned, dark Germanic. The slight hint of a sneer seems to have been factory installed on his face - it's there even when he sleeps. Of course, when he means it, it becomes even worse.

Affiliation: Street racer, occasional smuggler, parts-shop stocker. Rex works by day in an auto-parts shop, doing stock-work and making deliveries to dealerships and local mechanics. Undoubtedly while some small part of his financial success has to do with the occasional shipment gone missing, significantly more of it has to do with the occasional shipment that contains things it shouldn't...and his willingness to make deliveries on those things without asking questions. As a parts-counter guy, he's only a barely adequate mechanic - but he's willing to trade parts or cash to see a job done right on his car. When Friday night rolls around, he's a bat out of Hell any place he can find someone worth challenging, putting his legal and illegal earnings on the line in the best tuned vehicle he's been able to have cobbled together.

Brief History: Rex isn't an evil guy. He isn't malicious or deliberately cruel, he's just got a somewhat broken moral compass and very low tolerance for rules or laws that get in his way.

Rex's divorced mother took him with her to California when he was ten, and with her constant bitching about alimony payments instilled in him a sense of the unfairness of the world and its lack of respect for an individual's entitlement. As time went on, he saw less and less of his father, a low-end stock-car driver who made ends meet by working as a club magician (when he could find such employment) and doing children's parties (when he couldn't). These two miserable people were the exemplars from which Rex derived the Way the World Works:

Growing into his teenage years in California, Rex never stopped craving the spotlight. He was the second-best quarterback on the school team, until he got caught with steroids because he was tired of being second best.

At 17, he ended up pleading to a misdemeanor reckless driving charge that was part of a joyriding case against two of his friends. Because one of the accused thieves was eighteen, the case was uneasily divided between the juvenile and criminal courts. As his friends frequently worked on, bought, and sold automobiles, and were witnessed picking him up in the stolen car, he argued that he hadn't been told the car was stolen, and still wasn't aware when they were finally pulled over. He was fined, his license was suspended briefly, but because he was tried as a juvenile this is a 'sealed record.'

It is only because of this sealed record that he was able to get a driving job at eighteen while he was going to tech school. After his first year, he rapidly became one of the highest-paid young cabbies in the San Francisco Checkered cab fleet - until they figured out he was using every trick in the book to jump fares and run up the meter while using speed to convince passengers that they were getting somewhere fast, even though the 'short cut' was the long way around. It was around this time that he first started racing in SCCA Autocross events - solo slalom-course races that rewarded pushing the limits of control to make the best time through a difficult course. The skills he picked up would serve him well later.

At twenty-one, he was involved in a three-car pileup that was ostensibly the result of street racing. Rex insisted blithely that he was a non-participant, casting the blame on the other two, both of whom were also being charged with DUI (Rex was, perhaps surprisingly, clean). He got out of it with what amounted to a minor hand-slap, but his insurance agency then tried to charge him as well, and by the time it was done he had no car and a rather large legal debt. He couldn't keep doing his work without a car, and he couldn't pay off the debt without a job - hell, even with the job, he couldn't easily pay off his debt. Enter his old acquaintance Fernando, who knew some people who knew some people who could get him some money, quick, but he would have to repay it.

Rex understood from the beginning that he needed to pay the debt off in full and on-time, if not sooner. He made a pretty good impression for the first half year. Never missed a payment, always handed over a little extra, never made it necessary for anybody to ask where he was, much less where his money was. Better still, Fernando eased him into an evenings and weekends job that was significantly more lucrative...He just had to do some regular travelling to Mexico, behave himself at the border, and not ask too many questions. In time, his debtors merged with his employers, and when he finally paid off what he owed, he had a nice, regular source of side-income.

Two years later, after 9/11, the borders got a lot tougher. Rex had fewer appointments, and things seemed more and more dangerous. He'd gotten a decent job at an auto parts store, though, and in 2002, he got asked if he handled shipping and receiving. Why yes, yes he did. This was convenient, since a great many aftermarket and semi-OEM parts were produced in Mexico and shipped into the U.S. without much in the way of inspection. Rex simply had to make the right orders from the right companies at the right times and make sure the right customers picked them up. Or in some cases, he got to do some more driving, delivering 'parts' to particular customers who didn't have the time to come into the shop.

For Rex, things have been going pretty well ever since.

Rex has picked up more than a few simple sleight-of-hand tricks from his father - nobody who knows him can ever remember seeing him use an actual lighter to ignite a cigarette, and when he's bored he has a tendency to roll quarters along the backs of his fingers. No-one has ever proven any direct connection, but a few serious competitors have had to drop out of races in his vicinity because they couldn't find their keys. He's known to occasionally deal drugs...deal, not push...generally weed, never anything really hard, and he has strict rules about not selling to racers a day or two before they'll be racing. He'll happily sell to them afterward, but in at least this sense he sees himself as responsible, or at least not wanting any share of the responsibility if other drivers end the race in a hospital or a morgue.

Appearance: Rex is a swaggering cock. He dresses like a polished version of something out of a fifties biker movie, right down to the black leather bomber jacket and the slicked and styled hair. But between the curt remnants of his Brooklyn accent and the way the leather fits him, he somehow manages to make it work. As annoyingly stereotypical as it is, in a peculiar way the greatest annoyance is that he doesn't seem to be acting, or even aware of the stereotype. The man pulls it off, and somehow pulls it together with a casually maniacal flair that makes the hooligan effect seem only natural.

Personality: Rex is slightly aggressive at the best of times. He likes to be the center of attention. He likes to win. He's willing to support someone else's win, so long as it's obvious that he's the one who made it possible. He likes helping his friends, so long as they're appreciative and remember who helped them. Actually, he'll help just about anyone, so long as it'll feed his ego to do it - not that he thinks about it that way, he's just propelled by a more selfish drive-train than an altruistic one, but once it's put in gear, it's still delivering the same results so far as everyone else is concerned. When racing, Rex is extremely aggressive. He makes a good lieutenant or 'blocker' in this sense, and he's not averse to a bit of cooking the books, fixing the odds, minor theft, sabotage or other forms of cheating and unpleasantness, so long as nobody gets seriously hurt...And as far as he's concerned, emotional wounds can heal, and if it's a little risky, well...most modern cars are made to keep their drivers alive through most crashes...Not that anyone's certain Rex ever deliberately caused a crash, but he certainly seems willing to play chicken. This and the somewhat maniacal attitude he cultivates go a long way to suggest that he doesn't go out of his way to avoid causing crashes. Off the track, he has a tendency to see himself as the man others come to for solutions...Whether it's parts, drug connections, or solving problems that consist of other people. He's pretty easy to get help from for people who know him...So long as he's believes he's being treated with respect and people are willing to acknowledge that they need him and what he can do. Stroke him the right way and it's easy to get what one wants. Irritate him and...Things are liable to get harder. At the worst of times, Rex will be an arrogant and pushy bastard. If he is someone's lieutenant, they'd best keep him on a short leash. If he isn't the lieutenant, then whoever is had better watch their back. (With his limited scruples he probably shouldn't be a group leader.)

Other: Crooked. Which is to say, not straight...Not that it is likely to come up much, since every other male here seems to be! Rex certainly seems to prefer females, but then, more than any matters of gender, Rex pays attention to having his ego stroked. He's definitely a self-obsessed bastard, and the odds are good he'll either take the lead in bed, or expect to be treated well for the favor he's doing you. What do you mean he isn't doing you a favor? You're in his bed, right?

No more for now, thanks! pm me if you NEED to have a PC in this world. Maybe, maybe, maybe.

Whups, I'm sorry! I must have miscounted, I did not mean to push you over your comfort limit.

But I'm definitely glad you like him.

Actually, I wasn't hiding! I just read this thread tonight and was sort of going 'Where are the black knights?' There were characters who could have been put into a black knight group, sure, but there weren't many that seemed to be designed to be, well, classic antagonists or anti-heroes.

And then I started thinking about it. And then I was considering putting a movie on. And I pulled Streets of Fire off the shelf and that was IT. Because I had to make a character that let me use a picture of Willem Dafoe as Raven Shaddock. But Rex has little in common with Raven except his sneer, his hairstyle, and his yummy armor-piercing cheekbones.

The thing that took longest was finding a car, because I admit I am no authority on street racing and have probably played fewer video games about it than anyone here.

I am definitely looking forward to the game. :) Trying to play a smug male bastard looks shamefully interesting.